Hank is a guard at the nearby prison, Leticia is the wife of a death row inmate. On the outside these two characters couldn't be more different, but it is the very harshness of their existence, their loneliness and their bitter confusion that draws the two together when you'd otherwise expect them to recoil. Set in the Deep South and populated by people who seem to have long lost sight of hope and indeed heart, Monster's Ball is a powerful and moving observation of a world that most of us pray we'll never experience. Superbly atmospheric, intelligently scripted, sensitively directed, and with blemishless performances from pretty much the entire cast.